One door closes & another door opens: To close or self-disclose

One door closes & another door opens, cheers to many opportunities! And so many choices. Knocking our way through completing assignments. Climbing out of windows to breathe. Oh, to heartwork and vulnerability. As Palmer mentioned, "we teach who we are in times of darkness and times of light." The question then arises: How do we give & take before we break? And how much do we choose to share? All attempts to recognize the person within the teacher. All tries in the battle to close or self-disclose.

One door closes & another door opens. Entering UNT created new growth in many aspects of my life, including academically and socially. I recognized the friendships I formed within the Communication Studies department and how my peers helped spark confidence within myself. As an individual who prefers only talking when she needed to & listening before sharing, vulnerabilities sparked new realms of discovering my self-identity. The connection as a teacher to myself & in to turn to my students as well. To teach from my whole and to share lessons beyond the classroom. To share a part of me in everything I teach and all my stories.

I remember leading one of my students in the wrong direction for an assignment and told my mentor and peers, "My whole teaching career is over." As you may assume, they all agreed. Sarcasm there indeed. My mentor reminded me: "When you fall, you can get back up. Remember to breathe."

One realization in grad school: Everyone faces battles we may not always share. But all our feelings are valid, and we are in control to whom we close or self disclose.

To close or self disclose. As the semester went by, many of my students began facing struggles that went far beyond the classroom. In ways, I felt I could not fully grasp but wanted to help. A few students disclosed their difficulties with school and their battles outside, such as COVID, family, and mental health. I found myself trying to assure them by saying: "Thank you for sharing. I want to help in the best ways I can, as your instructor." Watching my students find their way through to learn or rather survive in all the levels of online education & maintaining a life outside of academia sparked so many commonalities within myself. I felt so focused to help, even in instances when I felt helpless. What a concept.

When my students, peers, and professors asked how I was doing, I found myself replying in 2 ways with a huge smile on my face: "My life turned into a school and I'm drowning, but that's ok." or "I think I'm ok." I attempt to be candor in my words, yet my actions always presume a sense of stress within myself. The stress to the point where you are not stressed. The stress when you become numb.

I needed to take a step back and breathe. Allow myself to feel, even when life becomes difficult. To remind myself that how I feel matters. And that I can mutually lean on others and support my colleagues through the #journeyofuncertainty as well. The journey can become rough, but sometimes relating in the roughness can help. And an attempt of a good weekly cry can too.

One way to open doors: Accept the care people offer to you.

Baby steps to knock through the barriers that get in the way. Recognizing the strong foundation and support among the busy neighborhood of thoughts. Learning how to accept all the challenges that we must face. One door opens, and another door closes. What are you letting in, my friends? #journeyofuncertainty

Grad school: A messy (and beautiful) struggle

 

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been a little overwhelmed with life. I think that it’s hard to live in society right now. I think that surviving is hard enough given the rise of fascism and white supremacy in the US…let alone surviving grad school during a pandemic. I’m really enjoying grad school because of the people that I’m meeting and powerful things that I’m learning. There have been many moments of joy in this semester!

At the same time, imposter syndrome is so real—especially when I’m feeling overwhelmed with assignments. It reminds me of Dewey’s analysis of miseducational experiences or experiences that close one off from learning in the future. Over the last 2 weeks in particular, I’ve really started questioning if graduate school is the place for me and what my role is within the academy. To put it simply, as the semester progresses, the frequency to which I don’t like my (academic) life has increased. Palmer did a great job explaining that there is a paradox in teaching and how humans are living contradictions. Maybe I just need to get more used to struggling through concepts and theories. Or maybe this isn’t really the place for me.

During our last peer mentoring meeting we were expected to have a writing session. This really felt like another thing to do when I first gotten the email, but I tried to stay positive since I very much enjoy the presence and thoughts of my group members. During our meeting, I felt a lot of joy and validation by my group members because they also shared how they were struggling in different classes. We struggled together as we tried to complete our various assignments and shared our insights on how we can support each other as a collective. Maybe struggling is part of the graduate student process.

After our meeting ended, I realized that, during my class’s meeting time, I usually enjoy the content of the class. Engaging in discussions about the material and sharing our thoughts in writing and in-person is something gives me a sense of community. It does make sense that the struggle of becoming an academic is difficult because it’s a messy search for truth. Education, as an experiential process, is powerful because I’m starting to see networks of kinship form throughout my classes—it refutes my imposter syndrome and makes me feel like I do belong in this space. Maybe I should #trusttheprocess.

So, while my paper proposals, like my life, are a hot mess, maybe that’s what it means to be alive. The struggle to live is contentious and can be dire, but the struggle for an education is worthwhile and the connections that it brings is what helps give my life purpose. The academy is hardened by a history of exclusion but when marginalized academics fight for their space within the university, I think it mirrors how waves crash over rocks. Eventually, the rocks give way and are formed by the waves. #DecolonizeEducation

 

#TeachingWhileNeurodivergent: The Double-Edged Sword of Palmer - Identity and True Selves versus Heart Work and Vulnerabilty

I'd like to start off by saying that Parker Palmer's work is probably the book and pedagogy that I've liked best so far, and nothing that I'm going to say here in this post is either in disagreement with his work or meant to be a dismissal of it.

That being said:

I love what he says in his book, but trying to work out how I could apply it to myself is much less straightforward.

Palmer's discussion about the importance of identity and integrity in the classroom, especially the part where he speaks on how the whole/true self should be brought in to teaching is the most validating thing I've ever come across for my position as #TeachingWhileNeurodivergent, no exaggeration whatsoever. Society puts out "be yourself" messages all the time, from PSAs to Disney's Aladdin. But when you are neurodivergent, or have a mental illness or learning disability, or exist on some spectrum somewhere, not passing for neurotypical or "being out", especially if it is possible for you to pass, is nothing short of a rebellious and/or scandalous act. Accepting or even liking your full self, alternative mental schema and all, straight up makes you a radical, and I would argue you're considered even more radical than a member of the Alt-Right, a religious extremist, or a terrorist, although, in retrospect, all three of those options are or can be the same thing.

The point is, I've always been in that group of people (mostly marginalized) who get the variation of societal "be yourself" messages that instead say "Be Yourself (No, Not Like That)" or "Be Yourself (But Not You, You Don't Count)". 

So having Palmer say that teachers need to be their full selves so genuinely really assured me in ways that I hadn't really known I'd needed. And the fact that incorporating our lives and strengths into the classroom, even if they aren't academic, really was helpful in showing me that my storytelling and tangents to help students understand topics could be a good pedagogical strategy as well as something that was true to myself - and, if we want to stretch, that it is a good pedagogical strategy because it is true to myself.

But.

(because there is a but here)

Even if heart work and vulnerability are great concepts to take into account, I don't know that I am skilled enough socially (human enough) to use them consistently.

Maybe, like it was apparent when discussing Palmer, my definition of what vulnerability is is different from Palmer and most other people. Maybe it's fine that because I spend time weighing what information is risky and what isn't, that not-risky information isn't vulnerability to me can make sense. But vulnerability with my students, in either my definition or in Palmer's...

Vulnerability doesn't work the same way with those of us who are #TeachingWhileNeurodivergent or #ExistingWhileNeurodivergent, especially not when you consider how vulnerability and disability both function rhetorically. Especially not if anxiety is involved in some form or fashion.

I hope this makes sense to you, but I don't blame you if it doesn't.

When you are anything other than physically and mentally abled, and other people know it, you are automatically constituted in a positionality that is inherently fragile and precarious. This happens in other areas of marginality as well, but there is a particular handling that really only shows up in dealing with the disabled and differently-abled. I think of this as the "Damaged" label. And I'm using "Damaged" here as a very specific word. I know that the idea of "brokenness" shows up in LGBT+ rhetorics, especially in ace rhetorics, and the idea that people in those communities are "broken" or can be "fixed" is involved in the "rationality" behind conversion therapy and corrective rape. But "broken" and "damaged" are two very different words. Something can be fully and properly assembled and still be "broken" because it's not functioning correctly. But if something is "damaged", then there's something wrong with it at the material level, and that's how we're seen. Even the most progressive or "woke" person will consciously or unconsciously give me that "damaged" association that they apply to all disabled or differently-abled people the moment they know I'm autistic, because now I'm damaged goods and that means I need to be handled with care, accommodated for, adjusted or repaired so I can function the same as everyone else.

So, as someone openly #TeachingWhileNeurodivergent, I'm already constituted as vulnerable. I already bare my neck just by being "out". The question is not "are you vulnerable", it's "when are you going to go for the jugular", because it's only a matter of time. A capitalist society does not have kindness for the likes of us deemed "damaged". 

So being vulnerable is great in theory, but every story I share just gives people more ammo to use against me and lowers my credibility with my students even further. And while power in the classroom can be harmful, as a teacher I have to have credibility in the classroom to teach. 

And heart work is also difficult because maintaining empathy and doing emotional labor, especially for long periods of time, is difficult. Relating to people can take more effort. The social nature of teaching isn't easy for an autistic person, and doing it with a full open heart? How do you not scare people with the intensity? How do you measure how much of an emotion is too much? What's genuine and what's not? And being vulnerable while doing it?

Here, let me help you plan your murder of me so you know all the best ways to murder me, it'll be great!

Sad Days Here to Stay Unless We Self-care Today

     Unfortunately, the sad times are upon all of us. In part, the "sad times" are exasperated by Covid-19 and quarantine; however, being in an election year is a sad reality for someone. On Election Day and through the year of campaigning, people are hurt and sadden by opposing views and problematic systems that we as beings live in.

    The purpose of this blog post involves to validate that everyone is, in fact, having a hard time right now, and to explain that just because some of our professors, mentors, and friends have been telling us to use self-care, does not mean that we can. Self-care strategies are things that can defuse stress, and take care of your mental and physical health. The Mayo Clinic provides some suggests from self-care such as, taking care of your body, taking care of your mind, connecting with others, and getting help when you need it. The article outlines that practicing the strategies will build support and strengthen relationships, reduce stress triggers, and increase mindfulness about physical well-being. The post should help you critically reflect on your self-care strategies and routines. 

                                          

    When we are talking about hard topics in the classroom, as Communication Scholars often do, we can become fatigued, but sometimes we are fatigued before we ever get to these hard conversations. Whether we like the world changing or not is in material because the world pre-covid is completely than the one we live in during Covid and post-Covid. However, the world changes is not entirely bad because it means that many people are engaging in an entirely new understanding of what self-care is and why it is important.

    Our professors encourage us to self-care, but what does that mean? Great question Alyx's hypothetical person. In short, each professor is different and thus has different expectation of disclosure. In my experience, some professors are have verbally acknowledged the need for self-care by saying things that resemble, "make sure you take time for self-care" and "call me whenever you need something". For some instructors, the idea of self-care is merely a progressive thing to offer to students without any real way of knowing how to follow through with providing self-care to students. Self-care is different for each student. For some students self-care is playing a video games. For others, self-care is reading a book. Whereas, sometimes a student needs to not attend class, delay an assignment, or turn the camera off during a zoom class. All of the aforementioned types of self-care are valid, however I find in the world of academia, the line of what we allow as self care is blurred and undefined. The lack of a clear protocol or explanation of self-care in higher-education can cause students to feel isolated, inadequate, and lose determination to engage pedagogically. 

    Unfortunately, the feeling of losing determination and focus can find its way into future occurrences,  changing the trajectory of a students path towards reaching their goals. Instructors play an important role here. Instructors' job is to be understanding and show compassion towards students. Palmer references the concept of "heart work" which plays the role. This role of the instructor is to feel emotions and be vulnerable enough to show compassion as hooks references in Teaching to Transgress. Our goal as instructors goes beyond the classroom and just teaching the material. In order to be engaged as a professor and stay well as an individual who has a life outside of the classroom, one must do self-assessments and evaluate how you are feeling at a given moment. The results of this self-reflection tell you whether or not you should engage in acts of self-care. Once the answer is yes, you know what you should do? ... That's right Alyx's hypothetical self, you should engage in self-care. Take that time for yourself to recover, destress, and re-regulate! 

    Undoubtable as scholars and instructors, for some of us, we do not always put ourselves first when we should be society, the academy, and ourselves tells as to appease those above us. However, before we can do our best work in a class or on a project we must evaluate how we can take time to be our best selves by asking for help when necessary, be mindful of how physical well-being, access stress levels, and evaluate and connect with our support system. The Mayo Clinic's aforementioned article outlines some good ideas or suggests to getting down with self-care that is a good starting point for anyone in need of some self-love (all of us). Which you can check out: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/mental-health-covid-19/art-20482731.

    Let's start taking what we say to our students, colleagues, and friends to heart. "We are here for you," is no longer enough. Lip-service will not suffice the need for instructors who practice "heart work" and compassion. We need to first assess our need for self-care as individuals. Second, we need to self-care! Third, we should reach out to our students with openness and vulnerability to help them in the most successful way possible. Finally, and most importantly, we should follow through with being available and open to accommodations to provide outlets for self-care for students by checking in during class rather than saying "contact me whenever" on the first day and never going beyond those open-promises that the academy expects. #FuckTheNorm

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/mental-health-covid-19/art-20482731

    

Waiting...

I've been thinking a lot about waiting tables this week. I'm glad that I don't do that anymore, because we're in the midst of a pandemic and because for several of the past few days I have hardly wanted to get out of bed, nevermind to go smile at people and sell them pasta. I also don't miss the utter disdain that people have for folks in the service industry. The servers, bussers, hostess, and kitchen staff that diners interact with are often seen as mere objects - either a hindrance or a conduit to them getting what they want. Restaurant ownership often treats you a similar way, as if you are disposable. If there are moments of appreciation they are short lived, and generally predicated on nightly sales. 

I'm not the first person to remark on these dynamics, and I certainly won't be the last. If you're looking for more food industry toxicity, the recent and horrifying story about Mission Chinese will be right up your alley. Reading this piece brought me so viscerally back into kitchens and dining rooms of my past, even though I can fortunately say that I was never in quite so caustic of an environment. I'm sure that it did for many others too.

The thing about restaurants is that they provide a direct linkage between public and private, making your screaming toddler a visible occurrence for your fellow diners, and offering you solace in the form of a meal when you're feeling down (or hungover). I think that this is a phenomenally positive thing, because these communal spaces, and the spaces where our lines are blurred allow us simultaneous exposure to difference, and opportunity to escape our own tiny reality. They are both intimate and public, in a delightful sort of way. I think other people feel similarly - in general, people seem to like going to restaurants. If they didn't, I don't think they'd still be around.

So why can't people seem to put these two parts of their brains together? If I like restaurants, why am I seemingly incapable of being kind to my server? How can I so easily dismiss them as a person not worthy of my kindness or respect? The question again comes down to a complex relationship of status and the associated perception of that status. These status orientations are constantly in flux, and they determine what we deem to be appropriate behavior. They also point to a serious issue: culturally, there seems to be an assumption that if there is a certain type of status gap (i.e. I am your server, you are my customer), then the person with the higher degree of status is not required to act with common decency.

I'm thinking about all of this because of the Mission article, because my brain is a dumpster fire right now, and because I sincerely miss eating too-spicy-for-me red curry and drinking slightly too much white wine. It does relate though, I promise. In the context of our conversation about re-imagining educational spaces a la hooks, I was left thinking primarily about the "how." How do we design those spaces so that students and teachers alike can engage with one another in meaningful, vulnerable, and productive ways? How do we change our norms of discussion and understanding so that they don't only center hegemonic viewpoints and - moreover - that the very idea that centering non-hegemonic viewpoints isn't caustic to so many folks.

To me, the questions about these environments are linked. The way that we engage with one another, the kind of empathy and vulnerability that we have, whether we consider our actions at a later point in time should be part and parcel of both of these environments. Just because you leave the (ideal) classroom does not mean you are exempt from behaving in this way. Retooling these norms and these behaviors takes a great deal of work in all of our environments and social structures. That's a big, big job. Recognizing this, we can either say "welp, that's too big of a task," or we can approach it with a little caution and fear, but also with the mindset that we deserve to live in a world where we treat each other well. I don't know exactly how to do that, but I do have an inkling that it starts with kindness and that it happens piece by piece.

On Virtual Corporeality and Heterotopia - 'What if' We Stopped Trying to Make URL Feel IRL?

From series ‘Heterotopia’ by Fiona Ackerman 
Retrieved from: http://www.fionaackerman.com/heterotopia-2012

Teaching and learning via digitally mediated platforms of connection/communication during COVID-19 is a motivating force to (re)imagine our roles and experiences in the classroom as students and instructors. A great amount of #ImaginationWork has been invested in trying to simulate the experience of in-person co-construction of knowledge through online platforms - complete with Zoom breakout rooms booming with think-pair-share activities and team-building exercises involving digital whiteboards. And still, as I touched on in the first installation of my #ImaginationWork blog post series - I’m struggling. There...I said it, I own it. In black and white, digital print.

In installation two of #ImaginationWork, I briefly chart my own positionality, posit the virtual classroom as a “heterotopian space,” and weigh our options for how to proceed, guided by the goal of education to be a practice of freedom and liberation. In so doing, I begin to unpack the question: what if, instead of holding online learning to the same standard of experience as the corporeal classroom, we stopped trying to make URL feel IRL and simply...went with it? 

Hooks (1994) reminds teachers that asking our students to be vulnerable puts them at risk, and should not be asked if we ourselves are not willing to also accept that risk (p. 21). For this reason, I want to briefly chart my own positionality as it relates to my practices and struggles with online pedagogy. As an interdisciplinary scholar with roots in both women’s and gender studies and communication studies, I have been shaped deeply by embodied pedagogies that welcome bodies - full to the brim with lived experience, spirit, soul, and emotion - into physical classrooms, places bound neatly by time and space and designated for learning. I recognize my privilege here; as a white, cis-passing, (mostly) abled-bodied person, with relative economic stability, I benefit from the access/ability of physically attending classes with relative ease. At the same time, I am a queer person with mental health challenges. And, like so many others who choose to trek the ever-shifting terrain of higher ed with/in marginality, I approach and experience school as “the place of ecstasy--pleasure and danger” (hooks, 1994, p. 3) mixed with the potential to cast off old ways of being and “through ideas, reinvent myself” (hooks, 1994, p. 3) and adopt onto-epistemological perspectives oriented toward creating a better future. 

In my experience, education is liberation. Education is freedom. And I long to gift this to my students. 

Heterotopia: "Other" Spaces

However, the academy (and beyond, of course, though the variety of outside contexts is beyond the scope of this particular post) during COVID-19 has spent the past 7 months in varying configurations of quarantine, operating within a strange sense of suspended time and space. The virtual education system, including the digitally mediated classroom, is a disorienting experience in which private and public places, so clearly designated before by places we live (home) and places we learn (school), now inextricably share space and time. It is important to point out, as well, that this experience of virtual learning is occurring within a context of global crisis, rendering it a markedly different experience than choosing to complete a degree online or work remotely.

"A New Heterotopia"
Retrieved from: https://treveena.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1-the-journey.jpg

In this sense, I have come to conceptualize the virtual (and perhaps physical, though I cannot speak to it) university classroom in COVID-19 to Foucault’s (1984) heterotopia, a location “outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality” (p. 24). Heterotopias are locations of hybridized in-betweens, haunted by liminal subjects shifting between physical and imaginal realities. Time and space are both flattened and expanded, nonlinear and nonphysical. In his 1984 essay, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” Foucault delineates six principles of heterotopias (“other” sites with “real” locations) which mirror and distort notions of utopia (“perfected” sites of no “real” place). I cite the six principles below, as well as some basic connections to the COVID-19 classroom in parentheses:

1. Heterotopias are reserved for those in crisis or deviance (e.g., teachers/students navigating education during the coronavirus)
2. Heterotopias function is affected as history unfolds (e.g., we are living in rapidly changing socio-political times)
3. Heterotopias are formed from juxtaposing spaces (e.g., virtual/discursive learning environments merging public/private)
4. Heterotopias are linked to slices of time (e.g., March 2020 in the U.S. to the present)
5. Heterotopias presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable (e.g., the hybridization of IRL/URL interactions creating discursive spaces of living/learning)
6. Heterotopias have a relationship with the wider society (e.g., higher education, be it online or face-to-face, does not exist in a vacuum)

So, why the theory lesson? Well, in the words of hooks (1994), “to name what we hope to know...might be most useful” (p. 94). I contend that naming the virtual classroom a heterotopia is helpful in so far as it provides a heuristic to contextualize online education in the era of coronavirus while wrestling with the slippery and constructed boundaries between “real”/”unreal,” corporeal/incorporeal, embodied/disembodied, URL/IRL. Given Foucault’s criteria and my abbreviated parenthetical connections, I argue the hybridized, liminal learning experiences of virtual education, populated with teachers trying their best to educate a slew of zombie students (trying their best), fit the heterotopian bill. 

In terms of how to settle the bill, I contend that it is imperative not to pivot to the banking model of education, but rather to engage #ImaginationWork. Yes, we are in crisis and operating within what is, at best, controlled chaos. Still, let us not settle for dispensing knowledge to students on the other side of the screen in hopes that they receive it and file away, but rather seek to creatively - and collaboratively - question the bill. I, as a person deeply invested in embodied pedagogies, would really like to know: what if we navigate the heterotopian, virtual, coronavirus-produced classroom with commitments to education as a practice of liberation and freedom at the fore?

My answer last week would have been striving to achieve “virtual corporeality,” or curating online educational experiences inducing “a state in which a user of new media technology becomes so cognitively immersed in their digitally mediated experiences that they perceive them to be just as tangibly ‘real’ as their sense of corporeal embodiment” (Blank, 2013, p. 109). If we cannot locate ourselves in the physical classroom, why not fake it, right? Maybe with enough iClicker questions, virtual Zoom handclaps, and breakout room activities the screens between us will begin to feel like a simple feature of heterotopia, as penetrable as they are prohibitive. 

I do not think this is the “wrong” answer, per se, but rather one approach in a kaleidoscope of options for how to navigate this heterotopia and perhaps a limited application of #ImaginationWork which asks us to actively imagine the future in ways that are better than where we began. Instead, I contend we must “face the fears teachers have when asked to shift their paradigms” (hooks, 1994, p. 36). To me, this means suspending the expectations of educational experiences based on physical bodies sharing corporeal classrooms and, instead, embracing the radical potential for virtual learning. This begins to get at my original question at the beginning of this post: what if, instead of holding online learning to the same standard of experience as the corporeal classroom, we stopped trying to make URL feel IRL and simply...went with it? 

From Embodied Pedagogy to Engaged Pedagogy

Rather than wrestling with investments in embodied pedagogy, I am choosing to adopt/adapt what hooks (1994) describes as an “engaged pedagogy”  and “recognize each classroom as different, that strategies must constantly be changed, invented, reconceptualized to address each new teaching experience” (p. 10-11). (Re)imagining the virtual classroom with a focus on engaged pedagogy honors the fact that heterotopias are strange, but they are also transformative.

From series ‘Heterotopia’ by Fiona Ackerman 
Retrieved from: http://www.fionaackerman.com/heterotopia-2012

So, I will end here, having at the very least named the virtual classroom in the context of coronavirus, heterotopia, and charting a way forward, engaged pedagogy, that hopefully leaves some unhelpful expectations behind. From here, I aim to activate #ImaginationWork to develop some concrete strategies of engagement in the virtual classroom guided by Freire, hooks, and other critical pedagogues with attention to the educational inequalities and diverse perspectives of the heterotopia’s subjects. 

References:

Blank, T. (2013). Hybridizing folk culture: toward a theory of new media and Vernacular Discourse. Western Folklore, 72(2), 105-130. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24551663

hooks, b.  (1994). Teaching to transgress:  Education as the practice of freedom.  New York:  Routledge.

Foucault, M. translated Miskowiec, J. (1986) Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), p.22-27.

Academicizing through vulnerability: education as a method of liberation and struggle

 

I’m not used to reading “academic” writing that is hopeful and spiritual, so it was very refreshing (and empowering!) to read Palmer’s book, The Courage to Teach. My original post that critiqued Fish’s book as a technology of colonialism was my attempt to offer a contingent analysis about how the academy is an inherently political site. My engagement with Palmer’s book required a dialogue with myself.  This dialogue confronted my identity and integrity as a teacher, student, and scholar within the academy. After our class’s discussion of the book, I think that teachers can implement Palmer’s pedagogy to academicize the classroom in the pursuit of liberatory education.

I agree with Palmer that teaching is heart work. Which is to say that teaching is both a profession and a life that operates at the convergence of intellect, emotion, and spirit. Put simply, one doesn’t stop teaching. In class we joked about the analogy of the teacher as the heart or loom that joins students, the discipline, and the teacher together as being sappy, but I also think it is true…regardless of how effective that teacher is at teaching. To be a good teacher therefore requires more than knowledge of one’s discipline and teaching techniques; it requires knowledge of one’s subject position and how their classroom operates as a political space. I would argue that denying these observations would deny the radical potential of teaching because teaching requires knowledge of the self as well as the students. As a student, it’s so powerful to feel like you’re seen and validated by a teacher as someone that is worthy of academic consideration. I thought it was very poignant when Palmer discussed how marginalized groups like women and black folx have been oppressed and their silence can be rooted in fear. This is important because as Palmer argues, traditional teachers are fearful of students (fear of losing power, credibility, or being “bad” at their job) and students are fearful of teachers. Most of these fears, are fears of the heart and as a result, we need a pedagogy that addresses teaching and education as heart work; otherwise, education is a product of exclusion and oppression.

Teaching and learning through the heart require vulnerability. This vulnerable heart work can create a community of learners or a community of truth. “If we dare to move thorough our fear, to practice knowing as a form of love, we might abandon our illusion of control and enter a partnership with the otherness of the world” (Palmer, p. 57). In other words, as teachers learn to love themselves, which includes their strengths which are also their weaknesses, teachers begin to embrace their fears for the better. Teaching from a place of vulnerability means teaching from a place of curiosity, hope, and empathy. Instead of teachers becoming seemingly fearless and omniscient authorities, teachers can recognize and acknowledge their fears, and in doing so, empower their students to acknowledge and embrace their fears as well. Teachers can embrace the awkward silences in the classrooms as well as their bad teaching days as part of what makes them a good teacher while still holding themselves accountable for improvement.

This leads me to my final point: vulnerable teaching and teaching as heart work creates the conditions for ethical academization. As we discussed in class, academization, in Fish’s terms, is teaching a topic and class, in “academically” critical and fair way—one that is free of partisan influence and free of political soapboxing. I’ve already discussed why this is problematic so instead I turn to a way to reform this technology: a community of truth with engaged scholars that learn from the texts as well from the experiences of themselves as well as their peers, seems to be what Fish strives for when he waxes about the beauty of academicizing. Palmer’s theorization of the community of truth democratizes the classroom such that students can engage in legitimate and nuanced debate about the subject matter while still recognizing the historical and contemporary stakes of the topic. For instance, when I work with my debaters to discuss how American Hegemony can lead to patriarchal violence, I do not require that my students cite evidence before they explain their personal interactions with the patriarchy. At the same time, I encourage my students to situate their experiences and their thoughts within a context of a global struggle. While I may be idealizing and cherry picking an example, I think that it is fair to say that it is more than possible, it is necessary, and even an act of joy, to validate and contribute towards my students thoughts, while still challenging them to engage and utilize a deep knowledge base. As teachers, students, and scholars, we are obligated to do more than acknowledge the politicization of the academy, we have to actively fight to utilize the spaces that we are privileged to access to help empower students and ourselves to engage in liberatory practice.

#DecolonizeEducation

 

 

 

Fish out of water: A lot on our plates

Fish out of water, making our way back in! Let us learn how to swim! Navigating in the new terrain of education. To avoid sinking within many unfamiliar waves. And to set boundaries in our day to day lives. All the ideas seem like a far outstretched perception to keep our heads barely above water. But not for Fish. Fish argues that academicizing refers to "detaching concept from context & real-world urgency. (Pg. 27)" In acts to separate the discipline from the human. The question then, we must ask: How do we separate our lives from school and work within our education? To look at our roles and only contribute to the context. To accept and encounter only what is being asked and avoid putting a lot on our plates. We don't. Yet Fish suggests that we have to try.

Fish out of water. Entering grad school and learning how to set boundaries developed many challenges. Delegating time for work, school, and life felt so beyond me. As a task-oriented person, I always felt guilty for making time for myself and not completing tasks to my personal scheduled deadlines. The endless loop of doing school work, doing TA work, and doing life all blended in a pattern:

Feelings = Sad → Break (Self-care) = Guilt → School work = I'm trying. Repeat. 

One realization in grad school: Getting the rhythm of school and work-life balance can create challenges when there is a lot on our plates.

A lot on our plates. Many of my students in 2140 reached out to me with concerns over a position speech assignment. The speech entails refuting how an editorial board made its argument. One student commented, "I agree with the main claim supporting the 19th amendment. How can I do the speech without disagreeing and going against my beliefs?" As I explained the assignment and the rubric to my student, I realized their misunderstanding of the speech aligned with Fish's argument. On learning how to separate your ideas from your work. To separate what is on your plate, and to only finish the material presented in front of you. That was all you needed to do. To say yes to tasks within our roles, and nothing beyond so.

With balancing all my acts within a school, work, and life, I realized I struggled with saying no. I enjoyed helping others and never really questioned the toll matters took on me until I remained within the pattern of helping everyone, even within hesitancies. I needed to learn how to take care of myself and set boundaries. What a concept.

I had to reconceptualize my priorities and take in every bit of my life to avoid sinking with all the challenges. To continue to navigate my way through the #journeyofuncertainty, without drowning in unrequired tasks I previously always took on.

One way to remain afloat: Do not say yes, when you mean no.

Baby steps to go against the hard waves. Gaining confidence in the unfamiliar terrain. Like a fish out of the water, with a lot on our plates. How are you floating by, my friends? #journeyofuncertainty

Misgendering is Not Okay!

     A classroom is a place for creativity and the formation of new ideas. Many professors have created a new "normal" of disclosing pronouns on the first day of class. Disclosing pronouns helps to fight for individuals who are transgender and gender non-conforming. The increased visibility of pronoun disclosure has been attempting to queer the "normal" to create a new normal. In many ways pronoun disclosure helps to educate and provide a safe space for people who do not identify as cisgender. Engaging in discussions about pronoun usage can foster new understanding and acceptance, because the current societal "normal" of assuming gender is repulsive. #FuckTheNorm

    The purpose of this blog post is to highlight where we can grow as individuals personally and as individuals who are apart of the academy. For those of you who have the ability and access to this blog, note that first, we have come so far as a society and a community in the way of acceptance and understanding. Being diverse is somewhat appreciated and encouraged, however sometimes in the classroom, being "different": or doing things in a different way can feel completely isolating.

    Inside of the classroom, as new instructors, we want to facilitate discussion that has a purpose, fosters new understanding and ideas, and we don't want to fail. Being apart of a department such as the Communication Studies department at the University of North Texas means that there is many students that have set precedence for the standard of work and academic performance. While each individual is different, treating someone with respect should not vary person to person. Every being deserves respect and attempt of understanding.

    Overall the Department of Communication Studies is accepting and inclusive, but this does not mean that our work as scholars and critical professionals is over. What happens when a student or person is misgendered inside of class? Over my first eight weeks of my first semester as a graduate student and a teaching assistant, I have realized that our department is not perfect and in certain parts, still buys into the old norms that keep our society in a comfortable place for oppression. Because gender has always been taught on a binary line, for many older professionals it is hard to change the active response of assuming gender identity, BUT this is absolutely not an acceptable excuse for why misgendering is okay. 

    Let me start off by saying that if you did not read the title of this entry, misgendering is not okay! When someone is misgendered in class, someone should say something to whoever was doing the misgendering. Correction is apart of growth and correction is not only the responsibility of the person being misgendered. When someone is misgendered by the professor of the course it becomes increasingly more difficult to stand up or unmute your mic in the middle of class due to the power dynamic that is in place. Ultimately and unfortunately, the aforementioned situation of a professor continuing to misgender students has continually happened this semester. The socially constructed norm of listening to the teacher teach and waiting as the student to be called upon creates an erasing of bodies inside of the classroom that can lead to isolation and "zombie" minded students Palmer (1998) talks about. Students that are directly involved and indirectly involve check out and do not learn or retain the material being taught because of the disruption in respect of identity. 

    Having everyone put their pronouns at the end of their Zoom name or disclose them in class is not enough to end oppression and misgendering. Grace about new things and concepts is important, but gaining the courage to stand up against the teacher/student power dynamic and going against the norm to address important issues of disrespect and discard can create a more cohesive learning community that values truth and creating an accepting reality! #FuckTheNorm

#TeachingWhileNeurodivergent: When You Fail To Connect

 From the first Monday of the semester when I met with my students I was disturbed about their silence and their lack of engagement. But, I thought it was me, maybe I was just too nervous or too intense (normal states of being for me, of course, but my off-putting self was new to them). 

So, I got another classroom when the room I was in only had 13 desks when I had 15 students, and I tried to figure out ways to engage them. I started adding communication and grammar jokes and memes to my slide shows to start with an icebreaker, and an inspirational quote at the end of the slides. I've delivered with enthusiasm and tried to draw them out.

Now, when I had the conversation of "please just at least give me a nod or a shake of the head" after the fourth or fifth week, they began actually using those nonverbal cues. But getting a verbal cue out of them has been like leading my horses to water and trying to make the drink. Which, if you listen to the idiom, they won't drink, and I know this.

But it is hard to stay enthused about teaching, and it is hard to justify putting my heart into a lesson I know my students won't appreciate, or finding the documents for an activity I know they'll do the bare minimum of participating in, if they participate at all. I know that communication scholarship is, at this point, probably a special subject for me, and my interest and excitement for it is not normal or neurotypical. Even if my students were Communication Studies majors, which most of them aren't, I know I'm still probably abnormal. But I also know my neurotypical colleagues would also expect communication out of students in a communication class. And I am very tired of having to buoy myself with the thought, "At least my Wednesday students will hopefully appreciate this". 

I set aside a large amount of time to do the COVID-safe version of the Crossing The Line Activity, maybe more than I needed. I did the Privilege Walk twice in undergrad and the experience was moving both times, so I was eager and excited. But by the end of the class, all the wind was taken out of my sails. They complied with the activity, but all but outright refused to engage in a discussion, even after I gave them 5 minutes for a minute paper to gather their thoughts.

Frustrated, I started loading names into a spinner to randomly pick people, after I warned them that I would have to start cold-calling after sitting in silence and reframing questions, didn't work. But before I clicked the button to spin, it struck me: I was about to do one of the things I hate as a student: punishing the whole class regardless of the fact that some hadn't disobeyed. Indeed, I'd had two or three students actually make small contributions. This wasn't a pedagogical choice I wanted to make. As a neurodivergent person, I know there are many reasons why people choose not to speak, and furthermore, I understand how painful humiliation and embarrassment could be. How could I put that pain on my students? 

I couldn't do it.

So I stopped, explained to my students that there was an expectation that they participate in the class, that it was in the syllabus and furthermore this is a communication class, so to do the act of communication in class was important, and that when we communicate and discuss it enhances their learning and understanding. I told them I understood there was a myriad of reasons that I listed that might be their justification for not talking, but their participation grades were still suffering. And then I dismissed them, because I couldn't stand to look at them anymore. I wasn't even angry through all of this. I was just tired and discouraged.

I'm still discouraged, because I know I'm not a good enough teacher to fix the situation. They will continue coming into class and not caring to participate, and I will keep asking questions to the air, and sometimes answering my own question as if I'm Dora or something. I know I didn't get through to them, in any way, shape, or form. Maybe a neurotypical person or a better teacher would be able to connect, but I'm not either of those things, and it's draining to pretend that I am. 

I don't have anything hopeful to end this with. I'm just sad. And tired.

I'd Love to Help

 This semester (and forevermore), I want to spend some time thinking about status in the classroom. Both 'status' and 'classroom' are flexible terms in my consideration, and it's likely that the way that these terms are interpreted will vary from week to week, but the core of what I'm considering will stay the same. How do we interpret hierarchies in our environment, and how does that relate to our capacity to teach and learn effectively?

This week, I'd like to consider training within the corporate environment. As a part-time-trainer (part-time-administrator, part-time help desk gal, etc. etc.), I have direct exposure to folks across the company. In general, I try to take a status-neutral approach to assisting people. In training, I work to speak clearly, leave space for questions, and err on the side of providing excess access to resources. In administration, I work to act diplomatically, increase accessibility, and err on the side of providing excess access to resources. In ticketing, I work to be courteous and prompt, and to err on the side of providing excess access to resources. Do you sense a theme?

Status in the corporate world is a question of how you appear, who you know, and the previous exposure that an individual has had to your department. This is similar to the classroom environment in many ways, but it differs in a key way: your teachers are not always going to be of a "higher" status than you, at least not in terms of pay or organizational hierarchy. However, a degree of "high" status can be achieved in a variety of ways. For example, if you are a SME (Subject Matter Expert) in a topic, then you are given more cultural capital, at least in that arena. Because specialties are both defined and expected, this type of fluidity in status arrangements happens all the time. However, there is a degree of status or respect that is often assigned via age, race, gender, and degree of exposure. Do you know someone? Do you know who they work for? Do you like that department? Do you think that they should have control over the work that you do? All of these conversations go into the instant mental calculation of how we suss up one another. Further, it's how I, as an "Analyst IV," a 23-year-old woman, who has been stopped multiple times in the bathroom by other women who incredulously inform me that "you look like you're 14," am one of the primary administrators and trainers for our company's core set of collaboration tools. Would you like to learn how to use Zoom? I'd love to help.

I think a lot about how to minimize the intentional status differences in traditional classrooms, but being faced with the array and flexibility of status in the corporate environment has gotten me thinking in a different way. How status is articulated is not only a feature of the hierarchies we know and love (hate? feel meh about?), but also something that is constantly evolving, and is based on many aspects of our cultural capital. As much as there is dysfunction and uncertainty in my non-academic teaching environment, there is a certain degree of ease that I have knowing that this marker of status is up for debate. I know that this ease comes in part because I am (relatively) comfortable in my environment, and that is a privilege that is informed by other privileges like my whiteness and my degree of social comfortability, and that I try not to take that for granted.

In all: I can certainly I can muck it up with a group of trainees, but I also have the opportunity to redevelop a relationship with workers at a site 2,000 miles away who have felt alienated by the department in the past, and I get to do that while actively playing with my role. Instead of posturing myself as the leader, even in a teaching space, I try to represent myself as a capable individual, but one who is actively deferential and engaged with the specific needs of the group that I'm working with. I also try to show lightness and humor and vulnerability. Vulnerability is particularly accessible in the era of COVID, but that's a double edged sword. Will someone be charmed by your apologetic warning that you may hear a dog barking? Or will they be frustrated that I am granted the opportunity to work from home, while they are not? It's a gamble, and not one that always works out in my favor. Knowing that, I know my crutch is there if I need it: "can I show you where to find some of our additional resources?"

The Process Continues

 

The Process Continues: My Journey in #TrustingTheProcess

 

              Week 9?  I cannot believe we are already at Week 9 of Week 15. Halfway through my first semester of graduate school and teaching. After my last blog post, I took some time to reflect on what I learned about #TrustingTheProcess and how to continue to trust the process, even when it is difficult to do so.

 

              While I cannot insert an image here like my incredible colleagues, I have decided to use my creativity in a different way by posting a song about trusting myself and never giving up and relating it back to the readings for Pedagogy and Communication. I love music and wanted to incorporate my love of it and writing into my blog. While the songs I pick do not always talk about trust, they are inspirational in their own right. I hope to give you insight by relating them back to the readings and how I #TrustTheProcess.

 

On her 2015 anthem “Fight Song,” Rachel Platten sings about the ways in which her spirit was not broken and the courage to keep going, even when circumstances could have easily prevented her from finishing out her endeavor. In the chorus, Platten sings, “This is my fight song, take back my life song, prove I’m allright song, my power’s turned on, starting right now I’ll be strong, I’ll play my fight song, and I don’t really care if no one else believes, ‘cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me” (Platten, 2015, Chorus 2, Lyrics.com). I find this song very relatable to #TrustingTheProcess in the aspect that like Rachel Platten, I sometimes lose faith in my ability to be a graduate student and TA, but I always find my way. For example, when Platten sings about how she has a lot of fight left in her (Platten, 2015), I also feel that I have to just keep #TrustingTheProcess, no matter how difficult it can get.

 

I struggled to write my Feminist Criticism proposal because as you all already know, my abilities to make rhetorical arguments are not as strong as they could be. However, I had a great conversation with my faculty mentor that immediately put #TrustingTheProcess into perspective for me. I was so worried about the ultimate evaluation and grade I would receive for Feminist Criticism that I think I forgot that the learning is the most important thing in the process. Of course, I want to do well, and I am striving to make a good grade in all of my graduate courses, but #TrustingTheProcess of learning is the most important component to learning. My mentor told me to put the grade aside and that as long as I learn something important to take with me into the future, everything else, including the grade I receive in Feminist Criticism, will work itself out. Even if I learn how to be a critical scholar and trust myself through the process and even if I never look at feminist theory again after this, as long as I learned something valuable out of my experience, that is what matters most. My faculty mentor reminded me to trust myself through that conversation, and I am so thankful. So, while #TrustingTheProcess as a graduate student, especially in Feminist Criticism, has been challenging, it is also a work in progress, something that I continue to work on every day. In the end, I know I will do well in the course because I care. Sometimes I ask myself if participating and caring is enough, but then I remember that I am trying my best. I need to trust myself and give myself a bit more compassion as I try to learn. Over the last two weeks, I have become a bit better at #TrustingTheProcess, although sometimes it still continues to trip me up. Like Platten sings though, I will continue to fight through the bouts of doubt I feel to obtain my master’s degree and also to continue to be the most effective TA for my wonderful students, who give me hope for the next generation.

 

              In his book “The Courage to Teach,” Parker Palmer (1998/2007) states, Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not—and that I choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.” (Palmer, 1998/2007, p. 14). I relate to this quote for a number of reasons. First, in order to become a holistic learner, I believe one must be honest with him, herself, or themselves. Palmer states that one does not need to strive for perfection to become a holistic learner and that being a holistic learner often means figuring out how to accept yourself as you are in the context of teaching and learning. For me, a brand-new TA in graduate school, I will make mistakes. But my integrity can never be unmatched, as Palmer would argue. Therefore, when I mess up as a TA, which has not really happened yet, I will find a way to bring my entire being into the situation to make it right again. Honestly, I would consider myself a holistic learner. I learn best when professors take my triumphs, mind, body, and soul into effect. Palmer discusses holistic learning in the aspect that if his heart is not in teaching, then good teaching simply cannot occur. Good teaching requires heart and identity. Therefore, I always bring my heart and identity into my teaching. I believe my students can tell a difference because I have received emails thanking me for the support I offer students. My pedagogy involves holistic learning and also room for trial and error.

 

              As a Teaching Assistant, I attempt to bring my entire heart into teaching my students in COMM 1010. In a virtual environment, it is difficult to bring my whole heart into teaching because I do not get to interact with my students and know them as I would if I was teaching in person. However, I do the best I can, and again, it’s just about me #TrustingTheProcess. If I stop now, nothing new will be accomplished. Finally, I am slowly learning that it is okay to have days where teaching and learning are tough. I’ve learned that not every day will be an easy teaching or learning day, but if we all continue to #TrustTheProcess and have faith that everything will work out, whether it is in classes that are challenging us, holistic learning, bringing your identity into the classroom, or teaching, we are all going to get through this sometimes bumpy but otherwise fabulous semester together!

Here’s to continuing in #TrustingTheProcess, never giving up, and continuing to learn.

Best,

Kendal

 

References

 

Bassett, D., & Platten, R. A. (2015). Fight song. On Wildfire, New York, Columbia, February 15, 2015.

Link to Lyrics.com Rachel Platten Song: https://www.lyrics.com/track/31853065/Rachel+Platten/Fight+Song

Palmer, P. J. (1998/2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons

#ImaginationWork: Engaging “What If?” as a World-Making Practice in the Online Classroom

As the last months of 2019 slipped into the dawn of 2020, the novel coronavirus radically remade human relations across the globe, from our homes to institutions of higher education. TAs and tenured faculty alike were forced to pivot under direction to transfer courses, teaching, and learning online almost overnight – or, at UNT, over an extended spring “break” – operating with the assumption that the pandemic would pass by summer allowing us to share physical spaces of learning together by the fall.

Yet, here we are, the last months of 2020 slipping into the dawn of 2021. Many of our classrooms are on still Zoom, our staff meetings are on Microsoft Teams, and we socialize via FaceTime, Instagram, and other digitally mediated platforms of communication. Effectively, our homes have become spaces of higher education. It feels impossible to imagine what the future might hold for academia at large, no less our positions within it as leaders and learners. How are we to proceed?

From my standpoint as TA and a graduate student engaged in a semester of 100% online teaching and learning, that is a difficult question to even begin to address. With little certainty to frame the future, there is much left to the imagination right now – a messy myriad of what ifs. 

What if mass-produced virtual learning environments are the future of higher education? What if our students do not have access to stable internet connections or necessary technological equipment to succeed? What if I cannot successfully adapt/adopt a pedagogical practice that upholds my commitments to what Paulo Freire (2000) terms “co-intentional education” (p. 69) between students and teachers...online? What if my favorite parts of teaching and learning – the cultivation of visceral knowledge via shared time and space, the relationships fostered in physical classrooms and hallways, the smell of dusty textbooks and crisp papers, the sound of loafers clicking down halls and the feel of bustling bodies blocking campus sidewalks – are facets of the past? What if, what if, what if...?

#ImaginationWork

SpongeBob SquarePants creates a rainbow over his head
and the word "imagination" hovers above it

I contend that we must embrace what Deanna Dannels (2015) terms “imagination work” (p. 217) to traverse the virtual Rubicon of online education. Imagination work is a world-making practice driven by “imagining new possibilities and narratives” (Dannels, 2015, p. 217) in service of creating better ways of being in a world that is ever-changing. It is our imperative, as critically-engaged students, instructors, and citizens to engage imagination work as an intervention to transform the educational challenges provoked by the pandemic into opportunities to co-construct new narratives of virtual teaching/learning.

“[Imagination is] an embodied intellectual faculty that, with careful attention and specific strategies, can effect personal and social transformation.” - Gloria Anzaldúa

Foregrounding imagination as a world-making practice is not new to the context of the classroom. Chicana feminist and scholar Gloria Anzaldúa (2015), for example, theorizes imagination as “an embodied intellectual faculty that, with careful attention and specific strategies, can effect personal and social transformation” (p. x). Freire (2000), too, advocates for a co-intentional educational practice whereby “teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge” (p. 69). As these scholars suggest, imagination is not only useful, but crucial, to achieve social and educational transformation. And, amid the novel challenges of teaching/learning online, it is increasingly more critical.

Perhaps the first step to engaging imagination is to define it. I appreciate the citation Dannels (2015) provides, quoting Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon’s definition of imagination as “the capacity to conceive of what is not” (p. 217). Further, according to the scholars, the very two words that all too often tickle my unease are the two words necessary to unlock imaginative ways of interpreting and navigating the unknown...what if.

Welcoming the “What Ifs”

According to Dannels (2015), living out the words what if “involves practicing imagination actively [and] finding ways of being in the world inspiring imagination” (p. 217). With this is mind, what if, instead of dwelling on the anxiety of the uncertain future or nostalgia for the past, we practiced embracing the messy present without trying to untangle the what ifs, but rather, befriending them?

What if we actively and radically (re)imagined our online classrooms as co-creational spaces, rich with potential, rather less-than-ideal locations of educational interaction? What if we engaged pedagogical practices that inspired imagination in our online classrooms and beyond? What if we reflected on what we have learned so far and created new narratives with “careful attention and specific strategies” (Anzaldúa, 2015, x) to improve education beyond the pandemic? What if, by engaging with our students through collective imagination, we began to forge new and better ways of being in the world?

  

I do not have the answers today (and most likely will not by blog post five) but have posed a few questions (thanks, Freire) that I plan to reflect on throughout the semester. Actively re-imagining the coronavirus classroom online requires we think toward the future while taking concrete steps to create it today. #ImaginationWork will involve practice, certainly. What if, however, actively practicing imagination is the portal to radically connecting, leading, learning, and world-making together to create a better future?

References:

Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the dark/luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. Cambridge University Press.
Dannels, D. P. (2015). 8 essential questions teachers ask: A guidebook for communicating with students. New York: Oxford
    University Press.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.

 

Academicize for Whom?

    Fish calls upon teachers to do their job which is limited to introducing their students to a new literature base and to develop the skills that are related to their discipline--nothing more, nothing less. Teachers should only conduct class in pursuit of (what Fish believes to be) the only virtue within the academy: the pursuit of Truth. In pursuit of Truth, professors can entertain any subject as long as it is academic in nature. "To academicize a topic is to detach it from the context of its real world urgency, where there is a vote to be taken or an agenda to be embraced, and insert it into a context of academic urgency, where there is an account to be offered or an analysis to be performed" (p. 27). This pedagogy begins from the perspective that the academy should be a neutral space from partisanship and that academics should save the world on their time but only within the bounds of their external qualifications.

    The purpose of this blog post is to refute Fish's pedagogy and to identify its philosophy as a technology of Settler Colonialism. I attempt this through an analysis of my own experience navigating the academy as a student and teacher to showcase how it is not a neutral site. The insular tendencies and the calling for the apoliticization of the academy therefore function as modes of colonial knowledge production. 

    To begin, I think that the creation of a class and the maintenance of the academy is political and its denial perpetuates settler colonialism. For instance, we've learned about the process of creating a class from Civikly and the ways that the teacher curates and plans for the instruction of their curriculum. The process of diving into the literature, selecting what histories are worth being told and analyzed, and the method of instruction, are all political acts. The denial of these actions as political is steeped in privilege and enables the erasure of indigenous knowledge that is often deemed irrational by Western epistemologies. I can't really explain how powerful it was for me to read decolonial literature from Chamoru scholars because it was the first time that I felt like I was represented in the academy. Fish explains in the introduction that he doesn't think that students are fit to judge the quality of the curriculum or lesson due to their inexperience and lack of expertise, but I argue that this is colonial because indigenous peoples are often excluded from the academy and structurally told that their knowledge is not legitimate. Fish, on page 168, explains that the duties of teaching extend outside of the classroom into areas like office hours but office hours tend to be one of the best sites for students to gain mentors and allies. The idea that office hours should only be used for intellectual pursuits while prohibiting the student to be a person as well as a scholar would lead to the academy only being accessible to those that are the most privileged.  Fish assumes that students and people in general can check their identity at the door which is akin to the way that racial minorities are told to leave their race at the door in order to assimilate into the professionalism of whiteness. 

    Beyond the denial of teaching as a political act, Fish perpetuates settler colonialism by calling for administrators and the university to remain neutral regardless of the political battles that take place within society. Fish applauds universities, such as the University of Wyoming, when, in response to calls by their students to condemn the Iraq war, the university released a statement saying that it does not have a foreign policy. I don't think we can understate the power that, for better or worse, the university has to transform society. Agents of the state are recruited from the academy to conduct foreign and domestic policy, graduates assimilate into capitalism by innovating technology for the the US and its military, and the vast majority of people, in one way or another, structurally benefit from structural oppression. The denial of the political potency of the university given these observations, in addition to the university's location on stolen land, mean that the university is part and parcel to settler colonialism. Moreover, I argue that the mobility and social prominence in American society is predicated off of mass exploitation and settler colonialism. That being stated, the university can be a site of liberation. One of the most common examples of the university influencing politics would be the student protests against the Vietnam War. But that's not as important as this central tenant: silence in the face of adversity is morally abhorrent when one has the ability to speak out. Universities, like privileged individuals, benefit from structures of oppression and have the ability to speak out against injustice. The rejection of this reality and the university's obligations, is complicit in and condones oppression. 

    If the academy hopes to be a site of liberation we must reject this pedagogy. To those who would rush to Fish's defense and espouse the value of academicizing, I would ask one question: academicize for whom? #DecolonizeEducation